Sonnet Blog

Sonnet CVLVII: My love is as a fever, longing still

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245774

This lovely sonnet is a classic Shakespearean sonnet as it was written by Shakespeare himself. It has 3 quatrains with ABABCDCDEFEF rhyme scheme with a turn between lines 12 and 13 and a rhyming GG couplet.
In the sonnet, Shakespeare is talking about love, but not in any sort of good light. He compares love to a fever which progresses into sickness, which only harms him in the end and leaves him with bitter feelings toward his lover. He even says his lover is "as black as hell, as dark as night" after previously believing that they were "fair and... bright". The bitter feelings toward his lover is the "turn" of the sonnet, as throughout all the beginning of the poem he was describing only the illness that love is and what it was doing to him.
The form ties into Shakespeare's message in that he outlines how love is harmful like an illness progressively through the poem, culminating in the final realization that he was fooled by his lover all along. He thought that they were fair and bright, but they were really just dark inside.
I chose to analyze this sonnet over others because of a few reasons. For one, I really wanted to dig into a Shakespearean poem that isn't extremely popular. Also, the topic of this sonnet truly interested me in its twisted nature of how the speaker is so harmed by love as much as they want it, and having to deal with the fact that the person they love isn't what they thought they were.